Gadgets and VoIP

Catch a Laptop Thief with Prey

I had a laptop computer stolen several years ago. I wrote about the robbery at the time at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/11/i_wuz_robbed.html. Luckily, I had a full backup of the laptop's entire hard drive stored on an online backup service, so I didn't lose any data. However, I suffered the indignation of my property being "ripped off" and also the possibility that someone could steal the data I had stored on the laptop. (The laptop was well secured with a user name and a lengthy password required to access the data on the hard drive, but a knowledgeable thief probably knows how to overcome that).

Experience is a great teacher. I decided to look for a laptop recovery program that would periodically report my laptop's whereabouts via the Internet. If stolen, I wanted to find out where my laptop was, assuming that the thief had powered it up and was using it. I believe that I found such a program.

Prey is a simple and lightweight program that will help you track and find your laptop if it ever gets stolen. It works on all operating systems.

ASUS Eee PC 1008HA Netbook Now Available for Ordering on Amazon

I have written before about tiny "netbook" computers. You can read my earlier article, Is a $400 Netbook Useful?, at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/12/is-a-400-netboo.html.  I took my 2.2-pound MSI netbook to the recent NGS Conference and demo'ed this newsletter to many conference attendees on the tiny system. Now Amazon is accepting orders for what appears to be the hottest new netbook on the market but is not yet promising a ship date.

ASUS Eee PC 1008HA is being sold for $409.99 and includes Windows XP, a 160 gigabyte hard drive, one gigabyte of memory (expandable to two gigabytes) and a 10-inch screen. It also includes built-in wi-fi wireless networking, a wired ethernet networking connection, and a 1.66 gigahertz Atom CPU (central processor). It has a keyboard that is 92% the size of a standard keyboard which should be sufficient to meet the needs of touch typists. It also has a 9.5-hour battery! Yes, you can use it for nine and a half hours before charging it.

Is a $400 Netbook Useful?

A year ago I published a Plus Edition article describing a $400 "netbook" that I had just purchased. A "netbook" is a new term for a tiny, low-powered laptop computer, usually weighing two pounds of less. These are small computers that are cheaper and lighter than full-scale laptops.

In the year since I purchased mine, I have traveled extensively and have used it to check e-mail from many hotel rooms, airports, and other places. I have written newsletter articles using its built-in word processor and have also created web pages for the eogn.com web site using an HTML editor that I downloaded and installed on the netbook.

In short, I have used this two-pound, $400 netbook to perform almost all the same applications that I typically do with my older $1,000+ laptop.